Growing Market for Brainwave Biometrics in Law Enforcement: Report

“The report calls the technology ‘brain fingerprinting’, and explains that it revolves around the analysis of how a subject responds to stimuli such as information presented on a computer screen.”

Government agents will increasingly use brainwave analysis to identify criminals and terrorists in the near future, and the trend is already well underway, suggests a new market report from Zion Market Research.

The report calls the technology ‘brain fingerprinting’, and explains that it revolves around the analysis of how a subject responds to stimuli such as information presented on a computer screen. A “four-channel EEG amplifier system” can be used to pick up an electrical brainwave response called “P300”, which “is widely used and accepted by the scientific community,” as Zion Market Research put it in a report summary.

“This technology plays a critical role in counter-terrorism prevention, as it helps to determine the people involved in terrorist acts directly or indirectly and even identifies trained terrorists who have the potential to commit terrorist acts in the future,” the market research firm asserted.

It sounds like science fiction, but this kind of brain biometrics technology has been the subject of a growing body of research in recent years in academia. The private sector has seen some activity, as well, though this has been more rudimentary than the kind of ‘brain fingerprinting’ described by Zion Market Research; a New York startup called SPARK Neuro, for example, raised $13.5 million in series-A funding last summer, and has also won a counter-terrorism contract from the Department of Defense, but that work was only meant to involve R&D, with SPARK Neuro’s technology not so much opening a window into subjects’ secret activities but rather offering a general indication of their emotional state.

Nevertheless, Zion Market Research insists that the global brain fingerprinting market was already valued at $3.62 billion last year, and projects that it will reach a value of $5.34 billion in 2025, reflecting a CAGR of 6.25 percent. This growth will be driven not only by government demand stemming from counter-terrorism and law enforcement, but also be demand pertaining to border control, marketing and advertizing, and even healthcare.

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